Volume 77, Number 3
June 20 - 26, 2007
Editorial/Op-Ed
N.Y.U. projections call for a new plan
New York University’s new strategic planning initiative is yielding results — specifically, in the form of concrete projections on the university’s growth over roughly the next quarter century. This is the sort of information for which local residents have been asking for decades — though the findings may not make them particularly happy.
Talking Point
An inconvenient root; Feeling just wild about weeds
By Christina Maile
Sex, sex, sex, rampant, fruiting, pushing, shoving, thrashing, tumbling, clasping, unclasping, bursting forth. Yes, it is one of the best annual events in the Village, when the streets of our neighborhood come alive with muscle and a voracious beauty burnished only by wind, sun and rain.
Murdoch would gut Journal, just as he did with Post
By Jerry Tallmer
I would like to have been a fly on the wall at the Alice in Wonderland tea party between the great grinning, purring Cheshire Cat, otherwise known as Rupert Murdoch, and that roomful of Tweedledums and Tweedledees — members young and old of the Bancroft family.
Letters to the editor
Police Blotter
Scoopy's Notebook
Ira Blutreich
Obituary
Anna Minot Warren, 89, actress of stage, film and TV
By Albert Amateau
Anna Minot Warren, a Village resident for more than 50 years and an actress with the Pearl Theatre Company whose credits span the Broadway stage, Off-Broadway, television and film, died June 2 in Reno, Nev., where she moved recently to be near her son. She was 89.
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Villager photo by Robert Kreizel
Walking for doc’s in Darfur
Last Thursday, students from Tompkins Square Middle School held a walk-a-thon through the East Village to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders to help the crisis in Darfur.
 N.Y.U. growth is on the charts: More students, more buildings
By Lincoln Anderson
New York University is projecting its academic and residential space will grow by 6 million square feet — or by a third the size of its existing facilities — in the next 25 years. Just where this expansion will occur — in N.Y.U.’s so-called central Village campus core or elsewhere — is unknown, the university says.
Soho residents can’t wait a year for traffic relief
By Josh Rogers
“Step outside,” the senior citizen said, challenging a police commander Monday night. After all, some Downtowners have dealt with Holland Tunnel traffic longer than others.
One-third bigger by 2031
 Venetian red or Pepto pink? Schnabel’s color clash
By Lincoln Anderson
Is the Mona Lisa smiling? Is Stonehenge a giant calendar? Are Jerry Garcia ties really worth 30 bucks?
Bumblebees and bugs rove to save community gardens
By Jefferson Siegel
Dressed as ladybugs, bumblebees, butterflies and sunflowers, revelers paraded through the East Village and Lower East Side to the sounds of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra on Saturday in the second annual Roving Garden Party.
Landmark moment at P.S. 42
Aaron Eng-Achson’s second grade English as a Second Language class from P.S. 42 on Hester St. recently created miniature models of official and unofficial landmarks in Chinatown for their social studies curriculum.
Arts and Entertainment
 The long winding road to selfhood
By Nicole Davis
“Passing Strange,” the fantastic new musical at the Public, begins in familiar territory for fans of Stew, the singer/songwriter and founder of the rock/pop band The Negro Problem, and the cabaret ensemble STEW.
“La Vie En Rose” (+) The scenes in this biography of Edith Piaf, which flash forward and backward, are not particularly coherent and can be confusing. Yet viewed as a whole, the film’s impact is overwhelming. That impact is due to Piaf’s extraordinary voice, the memories her songs evoke for the audience, her huge eyes, tiny stature, fragility, and vulnerability.
“Hot Fuzz” (+) This English film, a farce and satire, is very well done. A London constable, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), is told he is being promoted to the rank of Sergeant and transferred to a small English village.
Finding the common thread of heroism
By Jerry Tallmer
A year ago, when he was burning up the Off-Broadway boards as a no-nonsense, by-the-book Marine colonel with an extramarital Achilles heel in John Patrick Shanley’s “Defiance,” Stephen Lang had said that no, he hadn’t met any of the eight men he would next be portraying — eight recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor — in his incoming “Beyond Glory,” and wouldn’t care to.
Whoa Nellie!
By Will McKinley
If you were a kid in the 1970s you probably watched “Little House on the Prairie.” Girls loved Laura Ingalls, the freckle-faced heroine who wrote the books upon which the TV series was based. But boys watched “Little House” for an entirely different reason: a pigtailed villainess named Nellie Oleson.
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Listen to The Villager on Internet Radio:
In The Villager "Community Report" on Tribecaradio.net , Jai Nanda, executive director of Urban Dove, talks about "The People's Pier" redevelopment proposal for Pier 40. "The People's Pier" is one of two competing proposals for the 14-acre W. Houston St. pier. The pier is a designated "commercial node" in Hudson River Park and is expected to generate millions of dollars for the park in annual operating revenue. Recorded May 23, 2007.
NEWS
 St. Vincent’s moving away is best cure, neighbors say
By Albert Amateau
You’d think that St. Vincent’s Hospital, where six generations of Villagers have been born, cared for and died over the years, is a beloved institution in their neighborhood.
For Bleecker park parents, vigilance is nothing new
By Lucas Mann
“Freed W. Village Perv” blared the headline on a June 11 article in The New York Post. This “Perv,” was Carl Fisher, a 37-year-old man convicted of molesting an 11-year-old girl sleeping at his family home in 1999.
Rezoning plan under the scope
Lower East Side and East Village residents and elected representatives are polishing up their comments for Monday’s scoping meeting on the rezoning proposal that encompasses a 100-block area overlapping the two neighborhoods.
Cry for crackdown on clubs on B
Sleep-deprived neighbors living around lower Avenue B planned to voice their complaints to police officers at the Ninth Precinct Community Council meeting Tuesday night, June 19.
 A special Villager supplement
My Buckies, Carole and Bobby, best friends forever
By Toni Dalton
Every Thursday I would buy a carton of Lucky Strikes and bring it over to the Women’s House of Detention on Greenwich Ave. next to the Jefferson Market Library, where my Buckies resided after being arrested periodically for prostitution. A very unlikely trade for these women, being that they were heavy-duty dykes. But it supported their drug habit, which was becoming extensive.
Religion at forefront of this year’s Gay Pride March
By Audrey Tempelsman
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender synagogue, has attended New York City’s Gay Pride March for 20 years — and each time, the experience takes her breath away.
Man who may be gay helps me see how far I’ve come
By Tim Gay
There’s a certain man who’s around 40 years old. He works in a field related to mine. A lot of people say he’s a closet case. I don’t think so. Closet cases have sex. I think he’s just another nonpracticing guy with quaint ideas (or fears) about gay men. Either that, or his Catholic upbringing has forever stymied his libido.
 Equality is the goal, from marriage to the military
By Ed Gold
“Basic equality” is the central political goal of the gay community, according to Assemblymember Deborah Glick. The struggle for marriage legislation is at the heart of this campaign.
Hoops court or Family Court, helping kids rebound
By Alysssa Giachino
Though his league’s season ended more than a month ago, on Sunday mornings, Larry Busching is still awakened by the sound of dribbling and a basketball bouncing off the hoop of the courts below his sixth-floor apartment in Stuyvesant Town.
Sports
Home-run dramatics as Dodgers nip Reds for crown
By Lucas Mann
The Greenwich Village Little League playoffs came to a dramatic conclusion for the Majors A Division on Saturday morning. The Dodgers, the first-place team and huge favorites, faced off against the red-hot Reds, the dark horse team that had entered the playoffs in last place and outlasted the Astros, Padres and, finally, the Marlins to make it to the championship.
‘Donnie Baseball’ and blue bats are a hit at Pier 40
Don Mattingly, the former six-time All Star Yankee first baseman, now the Yankees’ bench coach, came to Pier 40, Greenwich Village’s youth baseball mecca, at W. Houston St. on Monday.
’Ballers don’t forget
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